Tower and Town, September 2021

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Colm Tóibín And His New Book The Magician

Colm Tóibín the acclaimed Irish writer – novelist, short story writer, essayist, playwright, journalist, critic, poet and+ ‘champion of minorities’ can be seen at 8pm Saturday 2 October, on the big screen in Marlborough Town Hall with a glass of wine in your hand! – or on line at home.

Tóibín will be speaking about his new book The Magician to be published on 23 September, but more of that later – I would like to tell you a few things about the man and his earlier works first. He was born in 1955 Co. Wexford, the fourth of five children. His grandfather was a member of the IRA and was interned in Wales after the 1916 rebellion. His father was a teacher and died when Colm was twelve. He has described growing up in a home where there was ‘a great deal of silence’. He could not read until he was nine and he developed a stammer.

At seventeen, in 1972, he took a summer job as a barman in Co. Waterford, working from 6pm until 2am. His days were spent on the beach reading The Essential Hemingway and he still has that copy ‘stained with seawater’. This was the start of his fascination with all things Spanish. He left for Barcelona as soon as he had finished his degree. In 1990 he wrote two books inspired by this time – his first novel, The South and a work of non-fiction Homage to Barcelona. In 1978 he returned to Ireland and began a Master’s degree but decided on a career in journalism instead. However, he did not abandon academic life and has been a visiting professor at several US universities. He is currently a professor at Columbia and is chancellor of Liverpool University. He also holds many honorary doctorates.

Tóibín is openly gay but private about his personal life. In 2015, ahead of the Marriage Equality Referendum, he gave a talk called ‘The Embrace of Love: Being Gay in Ireland Now’.

Back to The Magician. The early reviews are very exciting and I can’t wait to read it. It’s a fictionalised biography of the German author Thomas Mann.

If you would like a taster of Tóibín’s work before LitFest, The Testament of Mary is ‘a miniature masterpiece’ according to Marina Warner and only 112 pages. I would also recommend Brooklyn, Norah Webster and The Master, another fictional biography, this time about Henry James.

Ellen Prockter